Stretched

Love is the willingness to extend yourself for the purpose of nurturing your own and another person’s spiritual growth.

M. Scott Peck

This is my favorite definition of love. When I trained as an Imago Relationship Therapist, we learned to encourage couples to stretch themselves to enter their partner’s world. Once they did that … once they saw the roots of their partner’s behavior and attitudes … once they saw that it had little to do with them … once they saw the source of their partner’s reactivity as from past wounding … that they were only scratching a sore that existed long before they entered their partner’s life … everything changed. Defenses and anger melted into compassion and empathy along with a willingness to extend themselves to change their offending behavior.

That’s when I witnessed a miracle of love.

This new commandment challenges me more than “Love your neighbor as yourself.” It stretches me to a greater love than I have for myself.

Archetypal Stretching

Now that my daughter has moved, is settled, and everything is going great, I have time to return to Caroline Myss’s book, Sacred Contracts, which deals with how our archetypes connect to our reason for being here … our sacred contract. Caroline names four archetypes we all have … Child, Victim, Prostitute, and Saboteur. Then there eight that are particular to us. I was able to find the eight that seems to fit for me. Mother and Advocate were not among them.

The Mother Archetype

…is described as a source of nurturing/nourishment … a fountain of love, patience, devotion, caring, & unselfish acts. Innate mothers exude compassion and an endless ability to forgive. Not having received such mothering, these qualities do not come naturally to me. In many ways, I replicated the neglectful mothering I’d received.

Aware that our interests as well as our values around neatness were vastly different, when Nicole moved in with me seven years ago, I was in despair. I wasn’t sure how this was going to work. I finally came to see this as an opportunity to give her the attention she didn’t get growing up. I took my focus off what I dreamed of for in my new home (I had lived in this house for only seven months) and made my major focus her needs.

I stretched to show affection and to accept her as she is. After all, it isn’t her fault that she has weak muscles and cognitive deficits. Even though I’m not a warm, fuzzy mother by nature, I think I did fairly well. I kept my frustrations in check most of the time. And I created a daily ritual of expressing love.

The Advocate Archetype

…is one who champions rights in the public arena. That involves conflict and I’m a conflict avoider. Even though this doesn’t come naturally to me, I dealt with so many incompetent and indifferent systems, I had to learn to speak up. I extended myself on my children’s behalf. And let me tell you, it was hard! I pay an emotional price for hours after speaking out in any conflictual situation. I wait it out and practice self-soothing.

Even finding an appropriate assisted living facility involved extending myself in both these arenas. I think Nicole’s appreciation is evidenced by some new behavior I’ve noticed. Before she hangs up after calling me, she often says, “I love you” before I get a chance. She rarely if ever did that while living with me.

Reward

Nicole is doing remarkably well in her new home. She has had challenges to face. One reduced her to tears, but she handled it well. She stood up for herself and didn’t call on me to rescue her. Even when expressing complaints (mostly toward the food), she does it good naturedly. There is no hint that she is unhappy with this move.

When I share all this with my friends who helped me come to see the wisdom in Nicole transitioning to assisted living, they pat me on the back and exclaim: “That’s because she got good mothering!”

I smile at the affirmation … knowing that I fulfilled the terms of love … I stretched and extended myself for the purpose of nurturing my own and my daughter’s spiritual growth. It was not the context in which I dreamed of stretching when I first heard M. Scott Peck’s quote or during my sojourn with Imago Relationship Therapy. And, I fulfilled the terms in the form that was presented to me.

Blank Canvas

And now a whole new life stretches before me. The pandemic put the kibosh on the dreams I had when I moved into my new home. With a blank canvas, I move forward into the unknown.

Always before in my life, when one phase came to an end, a whole new and more wonderful phase opened. I don’t know if that is still realizable at 80, but I intend to follow Spirit’s guidance and stay alert to possibilities.

I suspect that digging deeper into my archetypes will offer clues and present new vistas. I stay attuned with curiosity.